A model city discovers that there may in fact be such a thing as too many parks.

By Jeff Byles
July 2001

Above: A proposal to connect downtown Portland's two linear parks would increase green space--at the expense of a dense urban fabric, historic terra-cotta buildings, and affordable housing.
Fabled planners' paradise Portland, Oregon, is a perennial hit on the nation's most-livable lists. The city wears its renowned urban-growth boundary like a tiara--and Douglas firs, the saying goes, are as common there as lampposts. It's precisely a bid for more open space, however, that's rattled the Rose City: in a plan for more parks, bulldozers would maul blocks of century-old facades and stomp over buildings worthy of the National Register to make way for a sweeping vision that critics have likened to urban renewal, Robert Moses--style.

The starting point is Portland's airy north and south park blocks--two linear greenways that together amount to a giant tree-filled front yard for institutions such as the Portland Art Museum and Portland State University. Now a group of citizens galvanized by former mayor Neil Goldschmidt has suggested connecting the two by mowing down the densely developed blocks that separate them and installing a tree-lined promenade bordered by shops and cafés. Likened to Las Ramblas, Barcelona's pedestrian boulevard, the plan looks to some like the city's ticket to ride. "It involves the soul of Portland," says Jim Westwood, president of the Park Blocks Foundation, a group backing the plan. "It's Portland's moon shot."

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To others, it's a road to nowhere. "This would be an aesthetic nightmare," says journalist Steffen Silvis. "To destroy those buildings seems ludicrous. They're wonderful walking streets. It's one of few places downtown where the pedestrian does have the primary right of way." In other words, it's got the very qualities that have made Portland a New Urbanist mecca.

Offsite:
For more information about Portland park planning try the park department's web site at http://www.parks.ci.portland.or.us.
Indeed junking the district's narrow street-scapes has raised hackles among the city's planning protectorate. "If you could build upon the unique character of this area instead of clearing it out, the city would be richer for it," says Kent Duffy, president of the AIA's Portland chapter. Richer in terra-cotta, for one thing: these blocks form the linchpin in a proposed Terra Cotta Historic District showcasing some of the city's architectural heritage. Losses would also include venerable local hangouts like Rich's Cigar Store and the Virginia Cafe, as well as affordable downtown housing. As one resident of a 60-unit low-income apartment house on a targeted block seethed in a newspaper editorial: "Shame on you for threatening to destroy the apartments of the weak and poor."

Is this the Haussmannization of Portland? Not so, says the 61-year-old Goldschmidt, who is revered for 1970s revitalization feats such as Pioneer Courthouse Square, the vibrant public plaza known as "Portland's living room." "This isn't just about a linear connection between the north and south park blocks," Goldschmidt says. "This is about building a new launch platform for the next 25 years."

And some terra-cotta's gotta crumble. "If you look at the horse we've been riding since the 1970s, it was constructed on a foundation of pretty integrative thinking," Goldschmidt says. He ticks off a list of blocks condemned or otherwise assembled by the city for projects--such as Pioneer Square and the ad-jacent Nordstrom department store--that arguably made Portland the boutique 'burg it is today. Those low-income tenants need not worry quite yet, however. "We're not seeking to take these blocks over and raze the buildings," Westwood explains. "One of those blocks has a brand-new hotel on it. It'll be fifty years before anything can be done with that block. It won't happen in my lifetime."

In 1998 Goldschmidt brokered a deal with developer Tom Moyer to buy one of the blocks--where a 12-story parking garage was set to rise--and donate it to the city. The Ramblas notion evolved as a pep pill for flagging downtown retail anchors and harked back to an 1848 plan for a 26-block linear park stretching from one end of the downtown grid to the other. (The existing park blocks are remnants of this vision.) Then last December Goldschmidt's crew announced that through purchases and donations it was in the process of gaining control of half the properties in question.

Mayor Vera Katz and planning director Gil Kelley called in reinforcements: an "advisory council of experts" boasting retail guru Robert Gibbs and landscape architect Laurie Olin, among others. Their opinion? "We said simply blasting the whole thing out and planting grass isn't going to do it," recalls Frances Halsband, a New York architect who served on the council. The experts recommended a two-block public plaza and broadened the discussion to include an area west of the park blocks. A revised Goldschmidt plan put a wide street down the middle in lieu of the two narrow lanes previously proposed--a notion the experts also rejected on the grounds that it would be a boulevard leading from nowhere to nowhere.

Still, says city commissioner Jim Francesconi, investments are needed to attract the next generation of downtown retail and housing. "We're going to have to get taller and denser," he says. "And we need public spaces if we're going to do that." He points out that getting land under public or foundation ownership--as the Park Blocks Foundation proposes to do--will give the city more options in coming decades when rising densities spurred by a slew of new downtown housing initiatives make open space even more indispensable.

Goldschmidt emphasizes that the Ramblas plan was never set in stone and that the goal is simply to bring the fate of these key blocks under public control. But he still believes that thinking big is the solution to Portland's problems: "When we asked our focus group why a park plan would be a good idea, one of the people said, 'Because it's a big idea.' And everybody nodded their heads and said, 'Yes, it's a big idea. We need one. Let's get off our butts and do something here.'" The era for such sweeping change may be over, however. "There are still misgivings about a lot of projects that happened here from the 1950s onward," Silvis says, mentioning the gutting of neighborhoods for the I-405 and I-5 freeways. "Portland is suffering quite a bit from some of the other great schemes that were concocted over the years."


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